You will find out that regarding love, you can tell yourself a lie. You can be evicted from a place you call your home.

I have made my bed here, something I seldom do. I know that wherever my bed is laid fourteen nights in a row, has become home. The problem I have is not laying the bed, the problem is getting comfortable enough with a piece of foam to commit to laying it, when laid or not, one could have a sleep.

The problem with leaving home is not leaving a bed that is always laid, or sleeping on a bare one or none for many nights. The problem of leaving home, is losing the attachment you had with that bed and starting all over trying to love another piece of mattress you were probably never meant to love.

That is what is happening to me now. I have to leave. I am facing the fear that comes with doing it all over again.

***

The problem of finding out that a lover is not really one; that where you thought you found home was a makeshift, is not that you are leaving. It is that you are starting all over.

You, who thought he was the one; that your days of loneliness were over, will find out that you were alone in a relationship you made in your head. To be more miserable than you ever were.

The problem is not that you are alone. It is that you are just realizing it and you never learnt to live with yourself; never knew how to be comfortable where he wasn’t. It is finding out that your ‘lover’ does not love you. The identity you built in something that never existed.

The problem does not begin at the times you hope against hope that something can be fixed. It does not start at the time you know your lover calls you ‘one of these random girls that like me.’ Not when you find out that you are trying too hard: sending apologies and saying it’s all your fault. No.

It does on the days that you are wondering what you did wrong; what you could have done better; whether or not you are wrong. These are the days you’re trying to adjust. Trying to adjust to being homeless.

See, if we want, we can sleep on ourselves. The skin is made thick, yet succulent so that should you lose a bed, you can sleep on yourself in the meanwhile or forever. You cannot make a lover by losing yourself.

The good thing about leaving home is the opportunity to find a place better. To get better at home building. To check more carefully with the building materials. There is just one more thing about losing love or realizing you never had one. It is the ability to write about it on a cold night and compare it with leaving home and laying beds.